In 1963, on our sort-of-honeymoon, we visited my new husband's family in Savannah, Georgia. I had never been further South than Ohio so the live oaks, Spanish moss, wrought iron balconies, fountains and square parks were just fascinating in spite of the August heat.

I made sure my children, who I ended up raising on my own, always knew they had a large family in Savannah. Recently, I started looking for genealogy information about that part of the family and learned that many branches of that family go way back to before the revolution, coming from a place called "Io", apparently an area of Switzerland. The elderly grandmother I met in 1963 was a Bourguin, and they, too, dated back to original Georgia settlers with hefty land grants. I also learned the Bashlors were buried in Bonaventure Cemetery, the gorgeous old burial ground featured in the 1993 movie, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.